Edited by Mark Casson, Professor of Economics and Director, Centre for Economic Institutions and Business History, University of Reading and Marina Della Giusta, Lecturer, University of Reading Business School, UK

‘We citizens of the 21st century are surrounded by networks: economic and social networks, real and virtual networks, business and personal networks, formal and informal networks, local and international networks. The Economics of Networks valuably assembles a fine collection of articles that illuminates the operations of networks from both social and economic perspectives. Read it and join the network of those who understand networks.’

• Contents:AcknowledgementsIntroduction Mark Casson and Marina Della Giusta1. Harald Baldersheim, Jan Bucek and Pawel Swianiewicz (2002), ‘Mayors Learning across Borders: The International Networks of Municipalities in East-Central Europe’2. Ashok Deo Bardhan and Subhrajit Guhathakurta (2004), ’Global Linkages of Subnational Regions: Coastal Exports and International Networks’3. René Belderbos and Leo Sleuwaegen (1996), ‘Japanese Firms and the Decision to Invest Abroad: Business Groups and Regional Core Networks’4. Mark Brayshay, Mark Cleary and John Selwood (2005), ‘Interlocking Directorships and Trans-national Linkages within the British Empire, 1900–1930’5. Ronald S. Burt (1999), ‘Private Games are too Dangerous’6. Mark Casson and Howard Cox (1997), ‘An Economic Model of Inter-Firm Networks’7. Howard Cox, Simon Mowatt and Martha Prevezer (2003), ‘New Product Development and Product Supply within a Network Setting: The Chilled Ready-Meal Industry in the UK’8. Niek de Jong and Rob Vos (1995), ‘Regional Blocs or Global Markets? World Accounting Approach to Analyze Trade and Financial Linkages’9. Sarah Drakopoulou Dodd and Eleni Patra (2002), ‘National Differences in Entrepreneurial Networking’10. Peter Sheridan Dodds, Duncan J. Watts and Charles F. Sabel (2003), ‘Information Exchange and the Robustness of Organizational Networks’11. Mika Kallioinen (2004), ‘Information, Communication Technology, and Business in the Nineteenth Century: The Case of a Finnish Merchant House’12. Douglas S. Massey (1987), ‘Understanding Mexican Migration to the United States’13. Larry Neal and Stephen Quinn (2001), ‘Networks of Information, Markets, and Institutions in the Rise of London as a Financial Centre, 1660–1720’14. M.E.J. Newman and Juyong Park (2003), ‘Why Social Networks are Different from other Types of Networks’15. Lucy Newton (2003), ‘Capital Networks in the Sheffield Region, 1850–1885’16. Rebeca Raijman, Silvina Schmmah-Gesser and Adriana Kemp (2003), ‘International Migration, Domestic Work, and Care Work: Undocumented Latina Migrants in Israel’17. Kenneth D. Roberts and Michael D.S. Morris (2003), ‘Fortune, Risk, and Remittances: An Application of Option Theory to Participation in Village-Based Migration Networks’18. Janet W. Salaff and Arent Greve (2004), ‘Can Women’s Social Networks Migrate?’19. Ma Ángeles Serrano and Marián Boguñá (2003), ‘Topology of the World Trade Web’20. David A. Smith and Michael F. Timberlake (2001), ‘World City Networks and Hierarchies, 1977–1997: An Empirical Analysis of Global Air Travel Links’21. Barney Warf (1995), ‘Telecommunications and the Changing Geographies of Knowledge Transmission in the Late 20th Century’22. Tamar Diana Wilson (1998), ‘Weak Ties, Strong Ties: Network Principles in Mexican Migration’Name Index